All of these rooms were from the original 1941 house and still had their original oak floors underneath the carpet. Or parts of them - half of the hallway had a pressboard sub-floor instead. It will do, though, until we put down new floors*.
BEFORE
DURING
Our lovely new guest room floors
Surprise! In the guest bedroom floor we found this strange mystery hole.
Tearing out the hallway carpet
The dogs help us remove carpet in the children's room
(The master bedroom and bathroom, added in 1967, have only a concrete pad underneath the carpet, so we'll have to lay down new wood flooring in those rooms when we get to them.)
Also, I discovered that I really, really like tearing out carpet! It's fun! It's actually the perfect renovation task in that it's easy, satisfying, self-contained, and not too taxing. Once I got into the rhythm of doing it I hated to stop. Though after doing it for eight straight hours, my hands were incredibly sore - not to mention heavily wounded.
The house came with built-ins in almost every room. Which sounds good at first, but they were mostly unattractive and inconveniently placed. In the guest bathroom the giant built-in linen closet stuck out so far into the room that it almost prevented you from opening the shower door.
Why would anyone build a closet this big in a room this small?
Removing one of two built-in closets in the children's room
Dev is pretty sure that hole is not his fault
Dev demonstrates the joy of home ownership
Ultimately we decided to keep two sets of built-ins (at least for now) and tore out all the rest. Those last two are on probation.
There are still plenty of things left to tear out, from light fixtures to entire walls, but this is a good start.
* The house currently has four different mismatched wood floors throughout the house, each a dramatically different color and style than the others, so we'll have to unify them in some way.
No comments:
Post a Comment